AC Local Trains in Mumbai by July 2014

The railways left passenger and freight rates unchanged in the interim budget unveiled on Wednesday but announced 73 new trains including 17 premium air-conditioned ones with an eye on the Lok Sabha polls later in the year.

The railways left passenger and freight rates unchanged in the interim budget unveiled on Wednesday but announced 73 new trains including 17 premium air-conditioned ones with an eye on the Lok Sabha polls later in the year.

Railway minister Mallikarjun Kharge resisted resorting to populist measures, a move seen as a clear deviation from the interim railway budget presented by Lalu Prasad in 2009, but analysts said the announcement of new trains was an attempt to woo voters.

The minister, whose speech was repeatedly interrupted by lawmakers protesting on the Telengana issue, vowed to move ahead with the reform agenda such as dynamic fare pricing on more routes, similar to airlines and shutting out political interference in passenger fares by setting up a rail tariff regulator.

"Determination of rates will no longer be an exercise behind veils where the railways and the users could only peep covertly at what was happening on the other side," Kharge said.

The minister also announced a string of measures to please passengers. More escalators would be commissioned at railway stations. Airconditioned EMU services will commence in Mumbai by July 2014 and passenger information display systems will be deployed in more trains. Passengers will now be able to get the status of their booking through SMS while more automatic ticket vending machines willbe pressed into service.

Kharge said rail network safety was being upgraded and detailed several measures such as introducing indigenously developed train collision avoidance system, eliminating unmanned railways crossing and installing comprehensive fire and smoke detection systems. In recent months, the network has witnessed several incidents of fire which have killed scores of passengers.

The railways raised passenger fares in 2013, after nearly a decade, overcoming populist pressures. In 2012, the then railway minister Dinesh Trivedi of Trinamool Congress raised fares but had to bow out as his party boss Mamata Banerjee resisted the move. Railway budgets have been used by successive governments to announce grand plans, some of which never get off the ground. An interim budget leaves little scope for any big bang announcements and Wednesday's event was no exception.

Kharge, who was handed the railways portfolio after Pawan Kumar Bansal had to resign over an appointments scandal, highlighted the constraints faced by the rail network and said it would rely on budgetary support as well as market borrowing to invest in new tracks.

He praised state governments which had come forward to share project costs in their areas and called upon more states to follow the example of Karnataka, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana.

"Inadequacy of financial resources is a key constraint to railways following the desired path," he said while talking about plans about involvement of private sector and allowing FDI as part of efforts to modernize the transport network.

While Kharge stuck to the rule book and made no big announcement in the interim budget, the minister used the opportunity to sell the success story of railways, the world's fourth-largest network, during the five year reign of the UPA-2 coalition.

He detailed the UPA's effort in providing rail connectivity to Katra, the base camp of the holy Vaishno Devi shrine in J&K and remote Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh in the north-east. "The 510-km rail link will be a big boon for the north-east. Meghalaya will also be a part of railways map," Kharge said, adding that Arunachal Pradesh's capital Itanagar too would be connected to the network in 2014.

The minister, who opened his speech off with a Ghalib couplet which meant that he will seek to present a true picture, resisted from making tall promises and outlined "realistic" fiscal targets for railways considering fund constraints.

He announced starting more high-speed trains while saying railways was exploring low-cost option of semi high-speed trains on select routes such as Delhi-Agra and Delhi-Chandigarh moving at 160-200 km per hour.